"It's those fellows up there on top of the bluff," said the fire chief.
"They've been pelting the firemen and the police for half an hour. They
can't reach this end of the line very well, but they've made it hot for
our men up near First Street. I hear they've killed some of the
Vigilantes up there. The Vigilantes tried to rush 'em, but it's up a
hundred foot of narrow stair, and they had to give it up. I wish the
whole gang up there was pitched into the middle of the fire."
I looked up at the bluff, and saw a black mass lining its upper edge.
Two or three hundred men and boys were clustered along its front,
yelling and throwing stones. It was evident that their position could
not be taken from the front. In no place was there less than fifty feet
of sheer ascent. But I recalled that the bluff was open to attack from
the rear by the way of First Street.
"I'll settle those fellows," I said.
"I'll see that you get the department medal, if you do," returned the
fire chief. "But you can't get up there without wings."
After stationing guards along the line of hose, I still had twenty-five
men who could be spared for other service. Most of them were still
standing by the engines at the top of the Beale Street hill. So I made
my way back to the corner, and with a few words explained the purpose of
the expedition we were about to undertake. They had heard the report
that a number of the Vigilantes had been killed by the hoodlums, and
burning with indignation they welcomed the chance to inflict vengeance
on the rioters.
"Keep together," I cautioned them, as we pushed our way through the mob
of sightseers and mischief-makers up Harrison Street to First. Evil
faces in the crowd gave us savage glances of dislike. But the white
band on the arm that marked the members of the Safety Committee, the
warning word of "Here come the Vigilantes," and the display of
pick-handles, served to discourage the thought of molesting us. There
was mass enough among the rough element in that crowd to swallow us ten
times over, but they knew that we represented the force of law and
government, and the rage for mischief fell to a muttering of threats as
we passed.
When we had forced our way through the mass of sightseers to a distance
of fifty yards from the edge of the bluff, there was a sudden shot,
followed by an answering rattle that sounded like the firing of a pack
of giant fire-crackers. Screams of women and shouts of men reinforced
the noise of the guns, and we were borne backward in a terrified rush of
the crowd. The infection of panic was hard to resist, but I succeeded
in giving a steadying word to my men, and they breasted the current till
the ground cleared before us. Then I saw that my manoeuver had been
anticipated. A company of the Vigilantes had made a flank attack on the
hoodlum position from the west by way of Bryant Street. We ran forward
to reinforce the company, and I offered our services to its captain.
"They fired on us," he said, "and we've cleaned 'em out, I guess.
Here's one fellow shot, anyhow. They've been throwing rocks down on the
firemen below, and knocked out half a dozen of them--killed two of 'em,
I heard. The cowardly brutes! Hunt 'em out, boys! There's some of 'em
left in those yards along the bluff."
I made a dash along the edge of the bluff, and was rewarded by flushing
a half-dozen hoodlums who rose from behind an outhouse, like quail from
a clump of bushes, and hastily scrambled over a fence. I called to them
to halt or we would shoot, and was over the fence after them in an
instant. Most of my men were too old for fast work of this sort, but a
glance behind me showed that half a dozen had followed me.
The hoodlums had led the way to a cul-de-sac of buildings, and were
cursing as they scattered here and there in the effort to find a way
out. The form and voice of their leader, and his running stride stirred
faintly the chords of memory. I tried vainly to recall where I had seen
him before, and the elusive recollection multiplied my desire to capture
him. In this resolve chance favored me. A stumble sent him to the
ground, and before he could rise I was on top of him, and held a
revolver against his head.
"Damn you!" he cried, puffing hoarsely in the effort to regain his
breath.
"Take it quietly," I advised him, "or you'll lose what little brains you
have."
"Damn you!" he repeated. "Let me up, or I'll kill you."
This time his tone and words stirred memory to definiteness. I had in
my hands the fellow whose knife-thrust had been near ending my career,
and whose gift of an overcoat had led me to Big Sam. and the train of
events which followed upon my visit to the King of Chinatown. Here,
then, was an agent of Bolton, and perhaps of Big Sam as well, leading
one of the hoodlum gangs in its career of riot and arson. And I felt,
as I gripped his throat, that I had within my hand the proof of Bolton's
criminal conspiracy. If this man could be got to talk, the jail would
close on Peter Bolton in the hour of his triumph; and the furnace that
roared and glowed below us would bring ruin to his plans as swiftly as
it had consumed the property of his enemy.
*CHAPTER XXX*
*THE END OF THE FEUD*
At last the night of alarms was over, and the forces of law and order
held San Francisco firmly in their grasp. The police and the Vigilantes
were fagged out but triumphant. And though the warehouses and
lumber-yards in the amphitheater before the Mail docks were but a
smoking mass of ashes and charcoal, the dangers of the conflagration
were over. The exhausted firemen were withdrawn to fling themselves
down to rest, and only a few hosemen were left to guard the smoldering
ruins.
The great conspiracy of the Council of Nine had come to nothing. Parks
was the only leader out of jail, and, in the absence of its active
heads, the revolution had deliquesced into a series of scattered and
objectless riots. The Committee of Safety had proved strong enough to
handle the emergency, and the militia companies, held all night in their
armories without a call for their services, were dismissed with the
dawn.
The first gray of the morning was lightening the eastern sky as I
disbanded my company. I had landed my captive in the City Prison,
stubbornly uncommunicative, and jauntily confident that he was to be
protected from harm. And when at last I had made my report at the
Vigilante headquarters, I was driven to Wharton Kendrick's home,
consumed with anxiety lest some of the wandering bands of rioters, or
another gang of bravoes sent by the highbinders, had been inspired to
attack it. Peter Bolton had succeeded in one of his schemes of
vengeance, and I trembled lest in the wreck of his conspiracy against
the peace of the city he had struck another blow at the person of his
enemy.
As we turned the corner into Van Ness Avenue my mind was relieved of one
anxiety. The Kendrick house still stood untouched by fire, and the gray
dawn showed no sign of further attack.
Andrews received me with composure.
"Oh, yes," he replied to my eager questions, "there was some of them
hoodlums come along here--gangs of ten or twenty at a time--and they
yelled a good deal. But when we showed our teeth they went by on the
other side. There was some shooting a block or two away, but they
didn't even throw a rock around here."
At this soothing report I flung myself down in the men's quarters for a
hurried sleep, dog-tired, but gratified to feel a reviving spring of
courage. It seemed but a moment later that I saw Laura Kendrick
threatened by the largest dragon I have ever met--in Dreamland or out.
The uncanny monster had the face of Peter Bolton, marvelously magnified
to fit a hundred-foot body, and he opened his mouth in sardonic laughter
as he moved forward to crush the slight figure that stood in his path.
At this sight I was oppressed by a modest but terrified conviction that
I would cut but a poor figure in a contest with a dragon. But spurred
by fear for the life of the most important girl in the world I ran
forward shouting out such threats as I could summon, in the hope of
communicating some of my own terrors to the monster, when on a sudden
his boiler blew up, and he was scattered into nothingness. The shock of
the explosion waked me, and I started up to find Andrews at my side.
"I didn't mean to knock the chair over, sir," he said apologetically,
"but you told me to call you at seven. And Miss Kendrick says you are
to go upstairs to breakfast, as soon as you're ready."
I collected my faculties sufficiently to make myself presentable, and
was received at the door by Laura herself.
"I'm afraid," she said, as she ushered me into the breakfast-room, "that
it doesn't agree with you to stay up all night. I don't believe you've
had a wink of sleep, but I've made some coffee that's warranted to bring
you wide awake before you can shut your eyes."
"If that's the way I look, my personal appearance is a libel on a
peaceful citizen. I have slept for close on three hours, and have
dreamed of acres of fires, and enough fighting to fill a book."
"Ugh!" exclaimed Miss Laura. "I don't see why men so like to fight. Do
you take two lumps in your coffee or three?"
"The explanation is very simple," I returned. "They don't like to fight.
One lump, please."
"Then what do they do it for?" she asked. "You had better take more
than one chop; they're pretty small, and you've got a big day's work
ahead--and behind."
"Why," I argued, "they fight for power, or reputation, or money, or a
pair of brown eyes--or blue, as the case may be--for fear somebody will
think them afraid--for anger--for almost any reason but enjoyment. I
saw ten thousand men in a scrimmage last night, and there were not
twenty of them there because they enjoyed the fight. At any rate, I can
assure you that the man in the crowd I have the best right to speak for
wished himself anywhere but in the front rank of battle."
"Humph!" sniffed Miss Laura incredulously. "I know very well that you
couldn't have been hired to keep out of it. You haven't been doing much
else but fighting since I got to know you."
"It wasn't from choice," I pleaded.
"Just tell me what happened, and how," she said. "I was scared blue last
night with fire-bells and hooting whistles, and men shouting in the
streets; and when I peeked out I saw a glare down town as though half
the city was going up in smoke."
Laura listened with a grave face as I gave a succinct account of the
night's adventures.
"And do you really believe that Mr. Bolton set fire to uncle's
lumber-yards?" she asked.
"In person or by proxy," I replied.
"Well, there doesn't seem to be any end to his wickedness," she said.
"I suppose he's prepared to finish us to-day."
"I don't think we can count on repentance--not from him. We shall have
to find something a great deal safer than that to pull us through. Has
your uncle dropped any more hints about that million dollars?"
"He talked of it more than ever, last night. He went over the word
'million' hundreds of times. Then he would call your name and say
'five-sixteen' as though he was trying to make you understand the
meaning of the figures."
It was an incomprehensible mystery, and we had to leave it so.
"Do you know what you are going to do, then?" she asked.
"Sell all the unpledged stock in the house, see what Partridge and
Coleman can do for us, and try to stand up the banks for the balance."
Laura Kendrick shook her head, with a business-like expression on her
face:
"I wish I could think of something better than that," she said with an
attempt at cheeriness. "We shall never get through the day at that
rate. But I suppose it's the best that's left us."
The door opened, and Mercy Fillmore appeared. The sudden intrusion of a
third person brought to my consciousness a realization of the
fascinating breakfast I had been conceded. But if I was so ungallant as
to feel disappointment at her interrupting presence, it melted away
under the soothing influence that surrounded her.
"What a night we have had!" she said, with an anxious note in the gentle
harmonies of her voice. "We were worse frightened at the fire-bells and
the shouting of men in the distance than at the drunken hoodlums who
passed by the house. Was there much fighting?"
"Enough--but nothing to be frightened about."
"If there was violence," said Mercy, with a trace of anxiety in her
tone, "I am afraid that Mr. Parks was among the misguided men. Did you
see anything of him?"
"No," I replied. "He escaped arrest when the Council of Nine was
gathered in, for he was making a speech on the sand-lot. I inquired for
him at the City Prison and the Receiving Hospital, but he wasn't there,
so I'm sure he must have escaped."
Mercy breathed a sigh of relief.
"Well, Mercy," said Laura Kendrick, "if you expect men to have any sense
about such things, you are going to be disappointed. They are fighting
animals--at any rate some of them are--and the best we can do is to have
a good supply of lint and arnica on hand, and read books on the best way
of treating wounds and bruises."
But a few minutes later she had forgotten this sentiment of resignation,
for when I set out for the office to prepare for the onslaught that must
come with the opening of the business hours, her parting injunction was
to "Leave the business of the police to the police, and don't let the
Kendrick family go to ruin by getting yourself knocked on the head in
some harum-scarum expedition."
I found Brown already at work, and his haggard face showed that he
shared in the keen anxieties of the day.
"This is a bad business, Mr. Hampden, a bad business," he sighed. "Four
hundred thousand dollars' worth of lumber went up in that fire last
night."
"Didn't we have any insurance on it?"
"Why, yes--we had one hundred and fifty thousand on it. But we had
borrowed that much on the stock, and the bank holds the policy. I was
hoping to get some more money on the lumber to-day, but that chance has
gone." Brown shook his head and sighed as though his courage had fallen
to a low ebb, and added: "I'm afraid every creditor we have will be down
on us now."
"How much shall we have to meet?" I asked.
"I wish I could tell," he groaned. "Mr. Kendrick has been so careless
about giving out his notes without having them entered on the books that
I can't say. I think there are about two hundred thousand of unsecured
notes out, but there may be a million, for all I know."
"How much money have we in hand?"
"It's not much. Not over twenty thousand."
"How much can we get if we drop that confounded load of stock we are
carrying?"
"Oh, if we could unload it without breaking the price it would stand us
something like two or three hundred thousand dollars, after paying off
all loans on it. But it's a ticklish market--a ticklish market. If we
start to throw the stock out, there will be a slump that will wipe out
our margins and leave us on the wrong side of the ledger."
"I'll see what can be done about it. Perhaps Partridge can get the
stock taken into stronger hands. Can you think of anything else that we
can turn into money?"
"There's just one thing I have remembered since yesterday. The Oriental
Bank let us have a hundred thousand on those Humboldt lumber lands a
while ago. The lands ought to be good for as much more if the Oriental
is lending at all."
"That sounds as though there might be something in it. I'll see the
Oriental Bank people at once--Partridge, too. If we can get a hundred
thousand from the bank, and get our margins out of those stocks, we
shall have, a fair chance of weathering the storm." As I turned to go,
I bethought me to say, "Don't pay out a dollar that you can possibly
hold on to."
Brown gave his head a deprecating shake.
"That won't do, Mr. Hampden. You see, we're tied up to our open-handed
way of doing business. Now, if we were acting for Peter Bolton, it would
be different. When he tells a man to call again for his money, nobody
thinks anything about it. They just say he's a skinflint, who could pay
and won't. But you know how Wharton Kendrick has run his business.
Whenever a man wants his money, he gets it as fast as it can be counted
out. There's the trouble now. If we go to asking for time, or putting
them off, why everybody will say: 'Aha! Kendrick is in difficulties; I
always thought he would go under.' And every account that stands
against us would be in before noon."
I had to admit that he was right, and sallied forth to the Oriental
Bank. The president received me genially, when I announced myself as
the ambassador of Wharton Kendrick, and threw up his hands in
good-humored refusal when I told what I wanted.
"You couldn't get a cent on that property to-day, if the trees were made
out of gold, Mr. Hampden," he said. "Property outside the city is worth
nothing to us. To be frank with you, we should feel easier if we had
the money out of the last loan we made you people. I'll make you a
first-class offer: Pay the principal, and I'll strike off the interest."
Partridge was hardly more encouraging than the president of the Oriental
Bank. He promised to bestir himself to find some one to take the stock,
but confessed that he was unable to suggest a buyer. And I was forced to
turn toward the office once more with a feeling akin to desperation.
The atmosphere about the business district was not of a quality to
reassure the despondent. Although the banks and exchanges had not yet
opened for business, I could hear everywhere the buzz of apprehension.
Frightened traders hurried along the streets with eyes eloquent of their
fears; anxious holders of stocks gathered in groups about Pine and
Montgomery Streets, with pale and troubled faces, as they began their
curbstone trading; and there were signs of storm indicating that we
should have a worse day before us than any that we had weathered.
As I reached the Merchants' Exchange, I came upon William T. Coleman,
and he greeted me with an air that warmed my spirit.
"That was a good piece of work you did last night, Hampden," he said.
And I blushed under the commendation as proudly as though I were a
soldier of the Grand Army called out to receive the ribbon of the Legion
of Honor from the hands of the Great Napoleon.
"We suppressed the riots last night," I replied, "but the people don't
seem to know it. I see more anxiety among the business men this morning
than at any time yet."
"It's absurd," said Coleman abruptly. "I can't understand why they
should take that tone. The danger is over. We have the situation
perfectly in hand. Men are signing the rolls by the hundred now. We
shall have the city so thoroughly guarded to-night that not even a rat
can come out of the sewers. It's nonsense to talk of panic conditions,
as some of these fellows are doing. By the way, how are Kendrick's
affairs? He had a bad loss last night."